Olivia Ford has her own channel on YouTube, and hopes to turn her clips into cash. She is one of a new generation of ‘vloggers’ turning viewers off TV

Olivia Ford is wearing a red curly wig and chatting sweetly to a video camera
in her bedroom. She is just 14, and the star of her very own YouTube
channel, where she’s known as LiviTheNerd. She saved all her birthday and
pocket money to buy her Canon 600D digital camera, and her parents chipped
in to fund a 21in iMac. Her main ambition is to become a YouTube “partner”,
and make money from ads sold on her channel. Partners receive “more than
50%” of the revenue, according to YouTube. “It would be so amazing,” she
says, “to think I could do YouTube as my job. Basically, the internet is my
life. I love YouTube.”

As, it seems, do many of us. In under five years, YouTube has become a global
phenomenon. Once the home of grainy amateur footage of people falling over
or keyboard-playing cats, the site now generates